Atari 7800 Homebrew Programmer Biographies

[Cousin Vinnie]

Over at Atari7800Forever.com, I'm cooking up some biographies for our illustrious homebrew programmers (and people that discovered prototypes) so the readers will know who the heck I'm talking about when I throw out a Brek Brixius at their virgin-esque ears. Here's what I woke up and wrote this morning as soon as I opened my eyes. I'm hoping for a community effort for accuracy. I'm going to keep some of the rambling, bullshit infused narratives in the mini bios, but I want the foundation of the entries to be factual. You can see with this typo ridden example what I am looking for. I need countries, dates, corrections on what they've done. I know I have omitted a few names too. If someone is missing, lend a hand. If you know what your favorite game is, tell me. Want me to take out the part where someone pantsed you in front of Peggy Sue? tell me. 

Here's the start of this project. If you can help with info, please do. If you don't, I'll just make it up  

 

Know Your Homebrew Hustlers

Here is a tiny biography page, informing the cosmos about the men and women (well... hopefully someday) that have helped ressurrect the Atari 7800 with their oddball creations, ports, and discovered prototypes. 

 

 

Bob Decresenzo (Pac Man Plus)
Country: American
Favorite Games: Pac Man Plus, Arkanoid
Most notable works: Pac Man Collection, Bently Bear's Crystal Quest, Baby Pac Man
The most infamous Atari 7800 hobby programmer is Pac Man Plus. Bob, who is a maze game expert, and started churning out Ms. Pac Man hacks at a blinding rate in the early 2000's and knocked everyone on their fat butts with the Pac Man Collection, a collection of customizable Pac Man games in one cart thatt eventually became the #1 selling homebrew for ANY atari system. What's more impressive than the diversity and quality of Bob's games is the number of finished titles he has produced in the last 20 years. 

Ken Siders
Country:American
Favorite Games:
Most Notable Works: b*nq, Beef Drop
Almost hand in hand with Bob, Ken started slinging out amazing 7800 and 5200 homebrews during a period of time where the 7800 homebrew scene was mainly producing rudimentary demos and cute attempts at games. Never wanting to be sued, Ken released ports of Q*bert and Burgertime under different names (b*nq and Beef Drop), and was working on a version of Tetris that was promising to be killer (Bloc Drop). Ken was cornering the market on games that start with the letter "B" and had teh world "Drop" in the title. Ken passed away from an illness around the year 2010.

Gambler172
Country: German
Favorite Games:
Most Notable Works: The 7800 Traveler Cart, ET Book Cart 
Gambler is one odd duck. Maybe not personally, but at least his games are. Instead of producing a myriad of maze, shooting or adventure games, Gambler seems to exist in the margins, releasing things you never knew you needed or wanted. After producing a few Pac Man hacks centered around a French comic strip and a couple of demos in the mid 2000s, Gambler then released the Traveler cart. "Travi" went around the world like a Phlat Stanley and 7800 fans took pictures with it, included gifts in the package, and sent the box to the next person on the list. Unfortuneately, "Travi" was lost somewhere in Europe, suspectedly shot down fighting the Nazi's over the German country side. Gambler rebounded nicely, helping with several homebrew projects and releasing 3 "book carts" to help encourage 50 year old nerd-children to get into reading.

 

GroovyBee
Country: American
Favorite Games:
Most Notable Works: Wasp!, Worm!
Marc Ball, better known as GroovyBee, started releasing full original homebrews shortly after Bob and Ken's amazing projects were recieving much ballyhoo. Though his two animal themed, extremely loud titles WORM! and WASP! were servicble homebrews, they weren't the best games in the world. Two new projects with playable demos, Apple Snaffle and Henry's Hen House seemed like much better attempts but GroovyBee got caught up in some nefarious goings on. He allegedly started promising people games that didn't exist, claiming people were stealing his prototypes, and ripped off investors over Intellivision homebrews and ultimately contributed to the demise of the XM Module. Groovybee, a retro game homebrew grifter, has been ostresized by the homebrew community. He's last been seen at the Greyhound bus station, rummaging through the trash cans looking for things to stick up his butt.

 

 

Brek Brexius (s102)
Country:
Favorite Games:
Most Notable Works: Alpha Race, Sick Pickles

 

Muddyfunster

 

SmittyB

 

Matthew luddieke

 

Mike Saarna

 

Penguinnet

 

Frankodragon (Clark Otto, Jr.)

 

Harry Dodson

 

Bobby Scott

 

Lee Krueger (ResQSoft)

 

Mitch Orman

 

Peter J Meyer/ Lance Ringquist  

Revontuli

 

(The guy making the Knight Games...  dammit what's his name?)

 

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Cousin Vinnie

[+Karl G]

1 hour ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

(The guy making the Knight Games...  dammit what's his name?)

@vhzc

[Jinks]

Maybe just leave GB out of the list to keep positive vibes. Every other guy deserves something cool written. Great work so far.  ?

 

[gambler172]

2 hours ago, Karl G said:

@vhzc

Vladimir Zuniga...i think and he lives in Chile

Edited August 29, 2021 by gambler172

[gambler172]

Some correction.

Groovy Bee is from UK

I made only 2 Ebooks....a third is nearly finished.

Merlain is some kind of parody Adventure...just for info.

And in the meantime....i made a Bentley like

Jumpnrun for a french magazine....tgis will be released at a later point.

[+groundtrooper]

3 hours ago, Jinks said:

Maybe just leave GB out of the list to keep positive vibes. Every other guy deserves something cool written. Great work so far.  ?

 

Well if you are leaving out GB then you might as well leave off PM also. At this point the Peter only lives to create fake/sock-puppet accounts so that he can trash Albert and Atari Age. He sends me a FB request about every 3 months to try to get to me to send me his AA Hate. I admin two Atari Groups I have banned him and one of his sock puppet accounts already twice this year. 

[+sramirez2008]

How about Matt Smith (AKA mksmith - Australia)  -Millie and Molly (should be released later this year) and 7800 Arkanoid (wip) and most notably, Atari Dev Studio 

 

 

 

[+sramirez2008]

Might want to consider Perry Thuente (AKA tep392) - Donkey Kong PK is pretty much a rewrite of the game.

[Cousin Vinnie]

good stuff, keep it coming

[+Mitch]

For the record, I have never programmed any 7800 games. So you can probably take me off of the list.

 

Mitch

[Jinks]

16 hours ago, groundtrooper said:

Well if you are leaving out GB then you might as well leave off PM also. At this point the Peter only lives to create fake/sock-puppet accounts so that he can trash Albert and Atari Age. He sends me a FB request about every 3 months to try to get to me to send me his AA Hate. I admin two Atari Groups I have banned him and one of his sock puppet accounts already twice this year. 

Ok how about they just fell into a vat of pig shit the end. 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2021 by Jinks

[vhzc]

23 hours ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

(The guy making the Knight Games...  dammit what's his name?)

Chilean Guy in Homebrew World ?

[edladdin]

Ken passed away in 2017.

[JumbleJag]

What ever happened to forgive and forget?..say something good about that person and move on.Both devs have added to the gamer community,it's pointless to talk shit about a dev when majority talking that shit can't do any dev themselves and add nothing to gamers.Seriously let this stuff go gentlemen.

Edited August 30, 2021 by JumbleJag

[Albert]

5 minutes ago, JumbleJag said:

What ever happened to forgive and forget?..say something good about that person on move on.

I'd be glad to do that if he wasn't still libeling myself and AtariAge on Facebook and privately to others, continuing to try and create new accounts on AtariAge (he succeeded earlier this year, which became damned apparent once he started posting), continuing to routinely harass others via email, sometimes as himself, sometimes pretending to be others, continuing to create fake accounts on Facebook even though he claims he hasn't been doing this for "two years" (ha hahahahahahaha), and so forth.

 

I have an enormous amount of evidence clearly demonstrating that Peter J. Meyer is a pathological liar and a terrible person, and someday I'm going to finish writing it all up so people can see this for themselves.

 

 ..Al

[JumbleJag]

Albert,I'm referring to these forums with other members,it does no good for new 7800 programmers as myself to read these comments,I'd expect you as admin to block his accounts and further actions as needed.I'm mainly talking about other members on the forum trashing devs that added to the community,I understand these two have done things.My view is acknowledged what they have accomplished and move on.

Edited August 30, 2021 by JumbleJag

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, JumbleJag said:

Albert,I'm referring to these forums with other members,it does no good for new 7800 programmers as myself to read these comments,I'd expect you as admin to block his accounts and further actions as needed.I'm mainly talking about other members on the forum trashing devs that added to the community,I understand these two have done things.

I agree that I don't want to see a thread trashing developers, and I don't like the tone this thread has taken.  If you don't have something positive to say, please move on to the next thread.

 

I make an exception for Peter, though, as he just does not know when to stop, and on top of that he gives the public impression that he doesn't even seem to feel that what he's been doing all this time is wrong.  I'm well beyond cutting him some slack simply because he's a developer.  I already gave him multiple chances to clean up his act when he was actively creating fake accounts (for years!) here on AtariAge before I finally put my foot down and permanently banned him.  At which point he really went off the rails.

 

 ..Al

[JumbleJag]

Firstly I appreciate the honesty and info,I'm new here,after reading your reply absolutely I understand your reason.For me it's more about others that add or help others join the dev community and writing a terrible biography about anyone that added to the community is a terrible view.

Edited August 30, 2021 by JumbleJag

[Shawn]

53 minutes ago, JumbleJag said:

Firstly I appreciate the honesty and info,I'm new here,after reading your reply absolutely I understand your reason.For me it's more about others that add or help others join the dev community and writing a terrible biography about anyone that added to the community is a terrible view.

 

If you have taken away far more than you have shared that is bed made solely by ones self.  I find that is more than true in all parts of life not just vidiot games. Sticking your head in the sand or sweeping it under the rug with the purple elephant in the room that nobody is supposed to talk about is not healthy or realistic. The sweet can only stay sweet when the sour is acknowledged for what it is.  It's not non-sweet, it's sour and always will be.

[Cousin Vinnie]

18 hours ago, Mitch said:

For the record, I have never programmed any 7800 games. So you can probably take me off of the list.

 

Mitch

You brought Missing In Action to the public. Im also doing people that produce found prototypes like you and Lee Krueger 

[Cousin Vinnie]

11 hours ago, edladdin said:

Ken passed away in 2017.

Thank you

[Cousin Vinnie]

1 hour ago, JumbleJag said:

Firstly I appreciate the honesty and info,I'm new here,after reading your reply absolutely I understand your reason.For me it's more about others that add or help others join the dev community and writing a terrible biography about anyone that added to the community is a terrible view.

I like writing terribly, though. It's one of my favorite hobbies

[Jinks]

It is sad people are that way and I like to see the good in everyone. 

 

Albert is a fair guy from what I have known of him and if he is saying it is that way I believe him. I do not need extra proof on anything. He promotes anything and everything Atari new and old both electronic and organic material. He gives everyone a fair chance and even has some leeway to let people make stupid mistakes here and there with a warning of course to cut things out or consequence. 

 

Just do whatever Vinnie. We know you will make it entertaining for us aging nerds. ?

 

To any new Atari people just know that everyone here is relatively friendly. ?

Edited August 31, 2021 by Jinks

[Trebor]

Vinnie, the list is missing:

 

-Steve Engelhardt aka @Atarius Maximus:  Dungeon Stalker (Co-dev with Mike Saarna @RevEng), Legend of Silverpeak, Death Merchant, Boom!, and several other items.

 

-Darryl Guenther aka @darryl1970: Popeye.  Thankfully, we have other titles to look forward to down the road as well. 

 

In covering the incredible amount of talent that has come about and brought forward some amazing games, it would be appropriate to recognize the graphics and sound contributions as well.. @Defender_2600 (Graphics), @Synthpopalooza (Sound), @PAC-MAN-RED (Graphics), are just some who have contributed an incredible amount of video and audio goodness to some of the homebrews, that would not be nearly as good looking or sounding without their development work.

[+Karl G]

Are these bios just for fun, or for reference purposes? If the former, I would just omit those people from the list. If it's for reference purposes, I'd make the entries brief, and take a "just the facts" approach to it.

 

Also, are you looking for people who have published carts specifically? If so, I'd also add Chris Reed @atari2600land since his game "GoSub" came out on cart last year.